


love song to a generation

by kwritten



Category: Girl Meets World
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Post-Canon, Cohabitation, Domestic Fluff, F/F, Gen, Lucas Friar/Farkle Minkus - Freeform, Millennial Romance, Original Female Character(s) - Freeform, Zay is a really good sport, post-college, references to corey/topanga/shawn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-18
Updated: 2015-12-18
Packaged: 2018-05-07 09:57:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,845
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5452523
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kwritten/pseuds/kwritten
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>2029::: Maya is a struggling artist trying to make it as a Producer for a small independent theatre and Riley is a Social Worker determined to make a difference, but they're still trying to make time to be there for each other in between the stress of jobs and deadlines and loan payments and everything else. There's always something else. But there's always them, too. </p><p>The whole gang is here.</p>
            </blockquote>





	love song to a generation

**Author's Note:**

  * For [jeannamarin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jeannamarin/gifts).



> I tried - I tried *so hard* - to make this as fluffy as possible. I have a hard time with tooth-decaying fluff, so I hope this isn't too _bitter_ sweet for you. Happy Yuletide!

It was the walk from the subway up to the loft that took the longest. 

She’d timed it. 

The whole trek took about forty-five minutes if she was coming all the way from the theatre, twenty from _Over the Bar_ , the pretentious coffee shop she’d been a reluctant barista at since her sophomore year of art school. From the top of the stairs at street level to the door of their ridiculously oversized (and probably overpriced) loft that Riley and Zay kept filling with absurd objects they called furniture, it took three minutes if she was walking at a reasonable pace. It could drag out to at the most five, if say she was carrying groceries or wearing heels after a long day of work because she forgot to stash a spare pair of chucks in her bag, seven if she lost Riley down the alley where she kept finding cats, and exactly four and a half if Farkle paused to demonstrate a soft shoe. 

Three minutes in twenty is only fifteen percent, three minutes in forty-five is zero-point-six percent. 

Lucas sat down and did the math with her. 

His pace was a solid two and a half minutes, they’d always been similar in the ways that don’t matter much to anyone but them. 

Riley’s average was ten minutes. Maya still wasn’t sure how she showed up anywhere on time at all. Farkle had an equation for it – her ability to leave late, arrive early, but take three times as long to get anywhere – but he couldn’t get the numbers to line up, he said she was a paradox and it was the first time he ever described Riley with anything other than absolute admiration. The fact that Farkle was scared of something, and that that something was Riley’s apparent control over space and time, was much weirder when Maya said it aloud at a party as an attempt of a joke. Her sense of humor had taken a beating lately. 

Zay’s average was at five minutes, primarily because the ladies at the hair salon on the corner always said hello and he loved them enough to say more than just hello back. It was only fifteen percent of her commute, but it felt like ninety. 

Zay said she should make it a habit to pee right after clocking out. His logic was that time and space always seem to be much longer and larger when he has to pee and everyone always has to pee at the end of a long shift. Farkle had wanted to make that into an equation, too, but the whiteboard in the kitchen that Maya had found at an estate sale and dragged on her own four blocks down the sidewalk and up seven flights of stairs before the building manager found her and sent the handyman to assist because the elevator just wasn’t large enough to hold it, had been fully occupied with a complicated record of their six week _Munchkin_ tournament and he was in the lead, so they all just agreed to take Zay’s word for it. 

Riley made her two playlists for her phone – one that was exactly forty-five minutes and the other that was exactly twenty minutes – the first ended on _Thriller_ and the second ended on _Wannabe_ , so that she had something to look forward to in those last three minutes. Maya told her it worked, but most days she forgot and on the days when she did all that pep and hilarious nostalgia just rubbed her the wrong way. 

One of her regulars had come into _Over the Bar_ that morning talking about her son getting pulled out of his kindergarten class for fighting; Maya remembered the day she switched to decaf because of the pregnancy. Back then, the shop had been a perfect location, halfway between the shitty apartment she shared with six other undergrads and campus. 

Moving wasn’t really the problem, either, she’d moved at least a dozen times since then, following one roommate or another into what promised to be a _better_ situation, but was just more of the same, and hell, if Mr. and Mrs. Minkus wanted to buy their son a three-bedroom loft in a more fashionable borough and turn a blind eye to his collection of squatters, who was she to complain really? Free rent isn’t something a girl in New York was going to turn up her nose at; one less bill was one less headache at the end of the day was a happy Maya. 

And keeping the gang all under one roof had crawled higher and higher on that metaphorical list of adult priorities instead of slipping down like everyone had always said it would. Four years of undergrad being spread out, hours away from being able to crawl under the covers with a bad movie, was too long and too far, the second they could it was the five of them under one roof – for a while sleeping in shifts on one mattress resting on a bare floor and not caring about how it looked to the outside world or that Zay had stretched out Riley’s favorite jeans. 

Maya kicked at an empty coffee cup someone had left on the sidewalk and tried to ignore the inner voice that most days sounded like Riley but sometimes sounded more like Lucas because goddamnit she spent every morning from three to nine cleaning up after other people’s coffee habits, she wasn’t going to do it for a stranger on the block where she lived even if it was the _right_ thing to do. 

In the next two minutes and twenty-three seconds that it took her to get from that paper coffee cup to the front door, she’d worked herself up and was ready for a fight. The best part about living with four other people was that there was always _someone_ to fight with if you were in the mood for it, and Maya had been in the mood for it more often than not in the past few weeks. 

Once she got through Tech Week maybe she’d have time to relax and wouldn’t be such a bitch all the time. 

Or the free time would go to her head, she’d start freaking out that the theatre wouldn’t want her anymore and she’d be forced to go back to freelancing and hoping to someday get her own small corner of a small art gallery that no one would ever notice or care about, and she’d still be picking fights with everyone the moment she walked through the door. 

Maybe she was just the kind of person who needed to feel backed up into a corner in order to feel alive. No time to look around or look over her shoulder, there wouldn’t be anything there anyway but a rock and a hard place, just her fists up and her hair flying and –

“You know what the worst part of—Hey? Are you guys leaving?” Maya narrowed her eyes at Lucas as he jumped back to avoid running into her as she opened the front door, crashing into Farkle who was hot on his heels. She lifted up the tray of coffees and the bag of muffins she’d snagged from the _Bar_ , her expression clearly saying, _no treats until you answer_. 

Lucas snatched the bag out of her hand and kissed her on the cheek, “Big game today, gotta run down to the school. You’re coming?”

Maya nodded, lowering the trays so Farkle could get his coffee, “We’ll be there.”

Lucas and Farkle exchanged a _look_ and she immediately regretted bringing home coffee to such obviously ungrateful, untrustworthy, unbearable---

“What did she do?” Maya had a very specific tone for _you fucked up_ and it was only slightly less scary than _you let Riley do_ what _while I was gone_ and she used it now, taking a step closer to Farkle because even after all this time he was still the weakest link, the only one that hadn’t quite figured out that her bark was worse than her bite. 

Farkle’s phone buzzed and he nearly jumped out of his skin, “I gotta get to the lab.” He pressed a kiss against Lucas’ lips hurriedly, pressing a coffee into his boyfriend’s hands, “See you at the game, coach.” 

Lucas looked down at Maya wide-eyed in the aftermath of Farkle running away, smiled his slow Texas smile, and said, “Thanks for the muffins?”

“Huckleberry I swear—“ but he was already gone, darting down the hallway to the stairwell. 

Maya kicked the door shut with her foot and sighed, “This is why we have to have roommates,” she declared to the ceiling. “You are not allowed to be left on your own. This is why we can’t have nice things.”

That probably wasn’t true. But it felt good to say where Riley couldn’t hear her. 

There were two more paper cups in the cardboard tray in her hand. A black coffee for Zay, who was probably still asleep and the happy power couple probably forgot to wake him up on their way out, and a vanilla latte with caramel sauce for Riley. Maya looked down at the two cups and considered. On the one hand, Riley had a fucking horrendous sweet tooth and Maya had personally made the horrific concoction of three-parts caramel sauce to one-part something halfway drinkable, on the other hand she was going to need coffee and if she drank Zay’s he’d be whining at her within the hour to make another pot and there was no way in hell she was doing that. 

Maya walked across the great room that made up the first floor of their loft and set the cardboard tray down on the long countertop that divided off the kitchen. She pulled the latte out carefully, grimaced at it, took a swig, shuddered. “It better not be another fucking cat,” she muttered to herself and then pulled the other cup out as she held the tray down with her right elbow. 

Zay’s room was tucked behind the kitchen, across the hall from her and Riley’s room, and she made her way there slowly, kicking off her shoes on the way. She had to use her elbows to open the door and managed not to trip over the pile of dirty clothes blocking her path to the bedside table, where she sat the now-mostly-cold coffee before ripping open the curtains on the window with one hand as she took another swig of Riley’s latte.

A chorus of groans erupted when she took the thick comforter and flung it off the bed.

“Hello Yindra!” she said brightly. “There’s no coffee for you because I wasn’t informed Zay had guests.”

“I hate your roommates,” Yindra muttered, curling her naked back away from Maya and pulling a pillow over her head. 

“I hate your roommates more,” Zay growled back thickly, reaching out blindly for the coffee that Maya let touch his fingers before pulling it away.

“What did she do?”

“Ah come on, sugar, let me have my coffee,” Zay slumped back against the sheets and flung an arm over his eyes dramatically. 

“What. Did. She. Do.”

“I want my coffee!” he was a whiner. She had learned this the easy way _and_ the hard way. There wasn’t really a difference with Zay. Lucas pouted and Farkle plotted and Riley cried before forgetting all about it, but Zay whined. 

She could hold out against Zay’s whining indefinitely. 

Yindra rolled over on her stomach, folded her arms across her pillow, and rested her head on her arms, looking up at Maya, “You all should be committed. Honestly. The codependency of the five of you is ridiculous. Do you need a therapist? I won’t take you, but I have a colleague that would love to study you for a Journal that keeps rejecting him.”

Maya smiled back, “That’s an awful lot of bitterness so early in the morning. Is Zay satisfying you? Because there’s always space for you across the hall.”

“Noooo,” Zay moaned. 

“Are you even allowed to look at other women? Weren’t you two attached at the hip surgically as infants or something?”

“Nooooo,” Zay moaned again, but still didn’t move, so Maya didn’t really feel all that motivated to stop. 

“We dated other people in college,” Maya shrugged. 

“Nooooo yooouuuu didn’t!” Zay sat up, annoyed. “No. You. Didn’t.”

Maya smirked and shook his coffee a little, “What did she doo?”

Zay turned to Yindra, spluttering, “They didn’t date other people in college. Riley _tried_ to date a girl in her Econ class, but ended up crying when the girl tried to kiss her and ended up in _my_ dorm room every night for the next three months because Lucas was too far away. And _this_ one,” he gestured at Maya, who never stopped smiling, “hired one of the kids in the theatre department to be her gay beard for two months. _A gay beard._ Poor thing thought Maya was too afraid to tell people she was straight, but _actually_ …”

“Actually I just paid her in free coffee to be my fake girlfriend until Riley told me she was ready to get back together,” Maya shook the cup in her hand again. “At least I’m consistent when I scheme.”

Zay sighed, “I don’t know what she did this time. I got home after everyone was asleep.”

“There was a weird smell,” Yindra offered helpfully. 

Maya raised her eyebrows and handed over the coffee to her, information like that was worth room-temperature coffee. “What kind of weird smell?”

Yindra pulled the pillow to her chest so she could sit up cross-legged on the bed, Maya tried not to smile at her attempt for modesty, took a long swallow of the coffee with a grimace and shrugged, “I don’t know. Reminded me of my sister’s place. Like… cabbage maybe?”

“Cabbage?”

Zay took the coffee out of Yindra’s hand and frowned at it, “’S cold.”

Maya shrugged, “She’s the one that plays with your penis, ask her for hot coffee.”

Zay looked at Yindra hopefully, who stared him down. “I dare you,” she said sweetly, taking the coffee back from him. “I’m not sure if it was cabbage, but it was weird. Sorry?”

Maya squared her shoulders, “I guess I better just bite the bullet and go in there myself.”

Zay eyed the latte in her hand, “What’s that?”

“Oh, here,” Maya thrust it at him and turned away. After she closed the door, she could just hear Yindra cackling out, _you deserved it_. 

Maya walked down the hall away from the main room and towards her own, sniffing the air suspiciously. She really needed to talk to the guys about their hygiene. Sometimes the whole house smelled like a boy’s locker room. There just wasn’t the right ratio of males to females in the house. Maybe Yindra would become more permanent and light a candle or get some air freshener for Zay’s room at least. That might help. And Yindra seemed like the kind of girl that could scare Lucas and Zay into washing their gym socks on a more regular basis. Or even just their regular socks. 

She paused, hell Yindra in the loft might convince _her_ to wash her socks more often. She looked down at her feet and wiggled her bare toes. How often did she wear socks? Was there a sock-to-shoe rule that she had forgotten? She felt like maybe that was something that she used to know. 

Maya eased over to the door and rested her hand on the handle for a moment. “Please not another cat. Please, _please_ not another cat.” She was really tired of explaining to tear-stained eight year olds why her girlfriend had kidnapped their kitten and held it hostage for days. Maya saw at least a half-dozen strays every day, somehow Riley only ever managed to find cats with legitimate homes and tiny little kids that love them. Maybe she should just go to a shelter and pick one up, tell Riley that she found it in a park or an alley somewhere. Except that there was no guarantee that a cat in the loft would stop Riley from cat-napping every cat she saw in a three-block radius. 

“Please don’t let it be a cat,” she whispered one last time, praying to … Mr. Feeny maybe. Santa Clause. Some old guy in the sky with glasses, but preferably one that knew what happens when you mix Matthews DNA with Topanga’s good intentions and throw in one too many summers under the guidance of Shawn Hunter. “Come on Feeny, don’t let me down,” she whispered.

“Mr. Feeny isn’t dead, you gotta stop praying to him like he’s a saint or something,” Riley murmured.

“He _could be_ a saint. He raised your dad _and_ uncle Eric _and_ uncle Shawn,” Maya hissed into the darkness. 

“You have to be dead to be a saint,” her voice was hushed, coming from somewhere on the floor near the bed. 

“I thought he was dead,” Maya stopped and blinked so that her eyes could adjust to the gloom. There was a weird, boxy shape on the far side of the bed. 

“You thought?!” Riley’s voice sounded far away and more tired than normal. 

What the hell were they doing to her down at the office?

Maya snorted, “He is dead you asshole. We went to his funeral after freshman year. I can pray to him if I goddamn well want to.”

“I’ll start the petition. Maybe the Vatican will approve his saintliness on your recommendation,” Riley sighed. 

There was definitely a large box in the middle of their room, and Riley was lying next to it for some reason. Probably bought something at a garage sale on her way home and then fell asleep next to it when she got too tired to put it together. 

“We’ll just send Eric. He’ll convince them in no time,” Maya knelt down and crawled around the side of the bed to Riley, hoping she didn’t smell too much like coffee and three days of sweat. She really should have taken a shower before pouncing on her very tired girlfriend but… a girl’s gotta do. 

“If anyone can convince the Pope…” 

Maya leaned over and kissed Riley softly, “What are you doing on the floor, honey?”

“Hi peaches,” Riley smiled, her eyes fluttering closed. “You smell nice.”

“I smell terrible,” Maya whispered gleefully. She did. She’d been wearing the same shirt for at least forty-eight hours, she hadn’t been home in days, she wasn’t even sure the last time she _saw_ Riley, let alone kissed her. She needed a shower more than she needed sleep and she wasn’t sure when the last time was she slept for more than a couple hours curled up in the Green Room with actors screaming over her head or underneath her switchboard when no one needed her. 

“Shh!” Riley pressed a small finger against Maya’s lips. “We have to be verrry quiet.”

“Are we hunting wabbits?” Maya turned her head to look at the box and saw a very small shape inside of it. “Is that a cat?”

Riley hummed, “Where? You got me a cat?”

Maya raised herself up on her knees and peered over at the edge of the box currently taking up real estate in her room. “There’s a miniature human in this box. Did you put it in there on purpose?”

“It’s a baby in a playpen, peaches,” sleepy Riley had much more patience than tired Maya. 

Tired Maya was also pissed off, ornery, and grouchy on the best days. 

“You brought home a _baby_?!?!” she hissed, shaking Riley in frustration. 

Riley sat up, wobbling a little, a faint mark crossed over her face from where she was pressed up against the folds of a blanket she had spilled onto the floor. “Her foster home had some complications. No one else could take her.”

Maya let her gaze travel over Riley’s exhausted face and then looked back down at the miniature human in the box in the middle of her room. This was crazy. She was way too overworked. First she was bringing home files, working more hours than Maya and Lucas combined, and now she was bringing home babies?

A foot needed to be brought down. 

Maya wondered if Corey was available to give a stern lecture. 

“Don’t call my dad,” Riley sighed. She stood up clumsily and grabbed Maya’s hand, tugging her gently to her feet before turning and collapsing into their bed, pulling Maya along with her. She curled up on Maya chest and yawned, “You call my dad and then he tells my mom and then my mom calls me and then I tell her I haven’t seen you in three days and then she tells my dad and then Shawn notices that they are acting weird and then he comes down to the theatre and yells at your Director-whatever and then my dad will feel like he has to one-up him and he’ll come to my work and then it will take mom a month to calm them down and they’ll be fighting over the couch when we go over there for dinner next week because they won’t just apologize to her or do the smart thing and sleep in my room and it will all be your fault.”

“Jesus, kid. I could just tell your dad to put them on speaker phone…”

“Do you really want me to run you through that option, peaches?” Riley looked up at her, eyes half-shut with sleep and puffy like she’d been crying. 

“We can’t have a baby, we can’t even remember to feed Farkle!”

Riley dropped her head onto Maya’s chest, “She’s getting a permanent placement this afternoon. I only had her for two nights. It wasn’t a big deal.”

Maya ran her fingers through Riley’s hair, her own eyes drooping, her body relaxing now that she was finally home, “Don’t do anything like this again without letting me know.”

“Don’t leave me alone for three days again.” Maya opened her mouth to retort, but Riley cut her off with a hiss, “And don’t give me that Tech Week bullshit. From now on during Tech Week you tell the _Bar_ that you can’t open, you come home, and you fucking _sleep_ … and shower.”

“Okay, I got it.”

“Say, I promise, peaches.”

“I promise, peaches.”

“Peach pie,” Riley hummed happily. “Let’s make peach pie.”

Maya smiled, her lips just gently curling at the corners. 

Just as she started to drift off to sleep, something fluffy and warm and heavy settled itself on her face. 

“Riley? Riles? Honey?”

“Hmm?”

“Is that a cat on my face?”

“Say hello to ---“

“Goofball.”

“That’s not…” Riley sighed and nestled deeper into Maya’s arms. “Okay. Goofball it is.”

“That doesn’t mean you get to keep it if you stole it from a little kid.” Maya waited a beat. “Honey?”

“Hmm… Peaches?”

Maya kissed the top of Riley’s head and smiled, “Honey.”


End file.
